


Hygge

by glowingauror



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bisexual Steve Rogers, Fluff, Genetically Engineered Beings, Kid Fic, M/M, Pansexual Bucky Barnes, Platonic Relationships, Stucky - Freeform, actually more like how they got the kid fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-14 05:02:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11776056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glowingauror/pseuds/glowingauror
Summary: This is how Steve and Bucky became Steve-and-Bucky, and then became Steve-and-Bucky-and-baby.(It involved Natasha, frozen eggs, raccoon and penguin mugs, learning new languages, plenty of cozy blankets, and the concept of hygge.)





	1. NOT THE SOLDIER ANYMORE

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic on AO3 and I'm very excited! I've read a lot of Stucky and realized my favorite fics involved children, and how their growth furthers an adult relationship. Therefore, this is the story of how Steve and Bucky are brought even closer together, partially because of a baby. Yes, Natasha's involved, and yes, I do know what the Red Room did. It's all accounted for.
> 
> WARNING: This begins after Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I will be disregarding everything that happens after that movie and writing my own timeline (for the most part).

It came out of the blue during a typical HYDRA raid. After the SHIELD-HYDRA amalgamation was exposed, the agency (that Darcy had dubbed SHYDRA) was undertaking extreme efforts to purge any remnants of terrorism from its ranks. That also involved scouring the massive information dump caused by Natasha Romanoff, notorious converted spy dubbed the Black Widow, for any tips on HYDRA bases.

Since the dump, Steve Rogers had been working with billionaire Tony Stark, Dr. Bruce Banner, Natasha herself, archer Clint Barton, pararescue and part-time therapist Sam Wilson, and the brilliant if underestimated ex-SHIELD agents Maria Hill and Sharon Carter to uncover and obliterate every base he could find. Of course, he still really wanted to find Bucky, but that came second now.

That was a lie.

James Buchanan Barnes had been Steve’s closest friend growing up in pre-WWII Brooklyn, and the only person Steve had been able to count on his entire life. Bucky took precedence over everything else, and upon waking up in the twenty-first century, Steve had never felt so alone in his life.

Until he discovered Bucky was alive.

Brainwashed, and tortured, and crafted into a HYDRA assassin, but nonetheless alive, which was more hope than Steve had ever thought to grant himself. Bucky’s fall lived on in Steve’s nightmares and PTSD episodes, and the thought of his best friend being alive but tortured while Steve gave up on him plagued him at night.

Steve knew Bucky was out there, because Bucky had broken just enough of his conditioning to save Steve from drowning and to call 911 to make sure the man didn’t succumb to his injuries. 

But it was a waiting game.

The general consensus of the Avengers and assorted others aiding Steve was to leave Bucky alone, wherever he was. Nick Fury, and Maria Hill and Sharon Carter by extension, wanted Bucky found and monitored, but Steve had convinced him.

“If Bucky’s really a danger, he would’ve killed me on that helicarrier,” Steve argued.

“He nearly did,” Natasha replied, a line between her eyebrows and sadness in her eyes. “Steve, we can’t just leave him be.”

“Natasha, if he does anything wrong to reveal himself, I take full responsibility.” Steve had said. He was done fighting for everything except for Bucky.

After a vote, it had been in Steve’s favor by a hair and no more was said about it, but every week or so, Steve would arrive home to his (brand-new!) apartment to find an envelope with the latest photos and information regarding a brunette fugitive with a fascinating prosthetic.

So the Avengers and company continued their regular HYDRA raids anytime they could, Steve receiving updates all the while of his lost friend.

Until the earth-stopping raid in Philadelphia when Steve heard a gunshot and turned to see the body of a HYDRA agent falling from the roof of a nearby building, a sniper rifle propped up beside him, and then turned to follow the bullet’s trajectory.

Huddled across the street in the dim light of the evening, poking out of the fourteenth-story window of a building was the barrel of a sniper rifle. And then the clouds shifted and the moonlight glimmered on a metal arm.

The floor dropped out from underneath Steve, but only for a second, because then Bucky fired off another shot and Captain America whirled around to find two more HYDRA agents dead from the same bullet, where they had been charging him.

The comms were blowing up between Clint’s shouts of an unidentified sniper and Maria’s fervent instructions to _leave, just get out, we don’t know him_ when Steve said, “But I do,” and Natasha whispered, “Oh, Steve,” affectedly.

Then the base was cleared out, and Steve noticed with an empty heart that the rifle barrel had disappeared from the window. With Sam flying above and Natasha entering behind him, Steve walked up the stairs of the apartment building, mentally steeling himself for whatever would lay inside that apartment.

He certainly didn’t expect the door to be flung open when he lifted his fist to knock, and he certainly didn’t expect two arms to close around him; one flesh, one metal.

And Natasha stepped down the hall to give him some space, and he could vaguely hear her muttering, “God, Wilson, no, they’re fine. Nobody’s killing anybody. He’s- he’s not the Soldier anymore,” before she descended the stairs again in the dark of the night.

If the shoulders of Steve’s suit and Bucky’s jacket were wet by the time they silently shuffled shoulder-to-shoulder into the chopper waiting to lift them back to New York, then that was nobody’s business but their own.

Thank God that Tony had chosen to sit this one out.

When they landed on the roof of Stark Tower (“it’s Avengers Tower now, God!”), Steve had walked right past Tony, Bucky following without a word. The man sputtered behind them, but Pepper had laid a hand on his arm and wisely said, “Now’s a good time to not say anything, dear,” and Steve couldn’t argue with that.

Steve’s rooms didn’t account for two super-soldiers, so Captain America attempted to sleep on his couch while the Winter Soldier slept in his bed, except Bucky still wasn’t used to beds yet.

When Steve woke up at eleven that morning, he nearly shit himself when he stumbled over his best friend sleeping with a pillow and blanket on the floor right next to the couch.

“Geroff, Stevie,” Bucky mumbled, rolling over and snorting. “Go back t’sleep.”

Steve rubbed his eyes, made a small _huh_ noise, and walked to his kitchen to ask JARVIS to start that stupid coffeemaker, and by the time his dark roast coffee was trickling into the pot, Bucky had stumbled, bedhead and all, into the kitchen, wearing only a pair of dark boxers and Steve’s duvet.

The blonde swallowed hard, turned around to get out his favorite mug (it was penguin-shaped) and his second favorite mug (it was raccoon-shaped), and turned back around to see sleepy blue eyes looking right into his.

Then cool fingers were taking his raccoon mug, and sleepy blue eyes were inspecting it with a little smirk, and the smell of coffee filled the air, and for the first time in seventy-odd years, Steve and Bucky sat down and drank their morning coffee.


	2. NOTHING COULD COMPARE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The very beginnings of Steve and Bucky's (physical) romantic relationship.
> 
> Because let's face it, those idiots have been in love since grade school and just didn't know enough to act on it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This begins after Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I will be disregarding everything that happens after that movie and writing my own timeline (for the most part).

Roughly two years after SHYDRA fell, and almost fifteen months after Steve and Bucky had found each other again, Bucky finally went back and really looked at the statistics.

He had been keeping track in a fancy little Moleskine from that bookstore on 82nd and Broadway, that shared his name. Of course, he forgot to log some days. The past fourteen-and-a-half months hadn’t been easy for Bucky and Steve, between Bucky’s still persisting conditioning and their coupled PTSD, as well as the stress of catching up on nearly three-quarters of a century.

Bucky loved math. Ever since elementary school and his first set of times tables, he had been head-over-heels.

_Almost as much as you love Stevie._

Well, nothing could compare to Steve Rogers.

Math was the reason he was such a good sniper, even if he didn’t necessarily like sniping. He enjoyed having to figure out trajectory and distance from silhouettes and shadows. His math scores would’ve been high enough for him to go to college to be… whatever jobs there were for mathematics. Maybe an engineer? 

So Bucky kept the statistics of nearly everything. Of good and bad days, of how often he understood a reference, what his record was for number of times making Steve smile in a day, how many times he woke up (and didn’t) at night, anything.

In the beginning, after that first night and the best coffee Bucky’d had in actual decades, Steve had gone out and came back with the nicest futon he could find, and a hard mattress to boot. He stayed in his room that night, and Bucky slept on that wonderful futon, except Bucky didn’t do much sleeping.

Every time he fell asleep he was back in that goddamned chair, until it was dawn and the sheets were soaked with Bucky’s sweat.

Steve had come out of his bedroom looking like he hadn’t slept either, and that was the first time since falling off a train that Bucky’s heart forgot its soldier rhythm and remembered the rhythm of Steven Grant Rogers.

There were ex-SHIELD therapists, but Steve and Bucky both ended up preferring Sam’s friends from the VA. Over time, the bad days (and nights) lowered in number, and the super soldiers began to reclaim their old friendship.

It would never be the same, but they had both known that the war would’ve changed it. While they weren’t expecting so much war and change, they could and would adapt.

And on a sunny Sunday afternoon, Bucky Barnes went back into that notebook and realized how damn far he’d come from the assassin he’d been.

Celebrations were in order, so he walked into Steve’s room with two cups of hot chocolate (in their respective animal mugs) and a bag of the _really_ big marshmallows, because little marshmallows were for weaklings.

“Come on, Stevie,” said Bucky, handing him the penguin mug. Steve looked up from where he’d been sketching on the new sketchpad from the same store as Bucky’s Moleskine, and accepted the mug gratefully before noticing the marshmallows.

“Buck, what’re those for?” Steve asked, furrowing his brow.

“You remember what we did in France after Gabe and Dernier sweet-talked those girls outside Rennes for marshmallows and graham crackers, and we combined our chocolate rations?” Bucky said, flicking his head to get his hair from his face.

“Did you get the stuff for s’mores? What’s the occasion?” Steve said, putting down his mug, opening a drawer in his desk to fish out a hair tie, and standing to fix Bucky’s hair into a bun for him.

“It’s been almost two years.” Bucky answered when he turned around, and found himself eye-to-eye with his best friend. “And we’ve gotten better. A lot better.”

“Not fully healed though, pal,” Steve said. Bucky gazed into the eyes of his best friend and silently agreed.

“I don’t think we’ll ever be fully healed, but this is pretty damn good,” he said, voice soft and eyes studying the faint freckles on Steve's nose.

Suddenly, Steve and Bucky both noticed how close they were, and each took a step back with pinked faces, muttering excuses about getting ready to go outside.

Bucky retreated to the living room with his raccoon mug and bag of marshmallows, setting each on the kitchen counter next to his boxes of graham crackers and Hershey’s bars, before moving towards his futon. He pulled out the phone Stark had given him, holding it in his metal hand and unlocking the screen with his right thumb. He swiped until he found that stupid weather app, noticing the night called for colder temperatures.

“Stevie, I gotta grab some sweats,” Bucky called as he strolled into Steve’s room. “Hope you don’t mind too much.”

“Not at all.” the super-soldier said, pulling a black Dodgers hoodie over his head, his gray sweatpants slipping on his waist. Bucky slid open a dresser drawer to fish out a matching pair of gray sweatpants and began to peel off his blue jeans. 

Soon enough, Steve and Bucky were on the helipad, with all their s’mores ingredients and no way to light a goddamn fire.

“I gotta admit, I didn’t think this one through all the way,” Bucky said, as they sat on the helipad of the roof, s’mores ingredients strewn between them. Steve laughed from where he was, an arm’s length away, and by the light of the moon, Bucky hadn’t seen something that beautiful in years.

“Nobody invited me to the party? I’d be hurt, if I was Tony,” Natasha remarked, and both Bucky and Steve turned to see her shutting the door to the roof with her heel, arms piled with blankets and was that a—

“You brought a lighter? Well, now all we need is a bundle of sticks and we’ll be all set,” Bucky said sarcastically. Natasha scoffed and moved towards them as Clint pushed the door open behind her, carrying a metal fire pit (fully stocked with wood) with his quiver strapped onto his back. When he turned to maneuver the pit out, Bucky saw the quiver was filled with kabob sticks for the marshmallows and swallowed a laugh. 

By the time they had set up the fire pit, blankets, and had begun the marshmallow roasting, Bruce, Darcy, Jane, Thor, Pepper, Maria, and Sam had filtered upstairs.

Darcy’s phone pinged as she was rotating her stick, and her marshmallow plopped into the flames as she fumbled for it from her pocket, fishing it out as she shoved her stick into Jane’s sugary fingers.

“Tony’s coming up! I’m getting a video of this,” she said, turning her phone towards the door. Not a moment later, the billionaire walked out looking indignant.

“A party on my own roof, and I don’t even get an invitation. You know, I’m sensing a pattern here. Steve loves to leave me out of the loop.” Tony said, pointing an accusing finger at the man in question, who was stifling a laugh, before settling himself pointedly next to Pepper. “Okay, what’s a man gotta do to get a stick around here?”

He was quickly passed a kabob, and once he discovered that the fire pit wasn’t quite right enough for his marshmallow-roasting preferences, called up one of his gauntlets so he could char it the way he liked.

“If you can see white, you didn’t do it right,” he lectured Maria, sitting on his other side. She looked skeptically at his blackened marshmallow before making the kind of sound you used to encourage small children in the back of her throat and turning to resume conversation with an enamored Darcy.

Steve and Bucky, from their places across the fire, had ‘accidentally’ begun holding hands when Tony came up and conveniently forgot to stop.

And later that night, when tired scientists and their loving partners began to filter downstairs, Sam looked over to the men out of time and noticed, with a smile, that Bucky’s metal hand was tightly wrapped around Steve’s, who was looking fondly at his best friend.

The next morning, when Steve and Bucky woke up on the roof, there were pillows under their heads and all the blankets were piled on top of them, shielding them from the moderate breeze. 

With a blush, Bucky noticed that his fingers were still entwined with Steve’s.

When he looked up at his friend’s face, Steve’s eyes met his, and without flinching, the damn man lifted Bucky’s hand to press a kiss to the (freezing) metal knuckles.


	3. I HAVE A WEAKNESS FOR RIGHTEOUS MEN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky and Steve get their shit together.
> 
> shit together: (n.) if regarding two super soldiers, to get to first base

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For everybody who hasn't finished season three of Game of Thrones: there are spoilers ahead.
> 
> WARNING: This begins after Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I will be disregarding everything that happens after that movie and writing my own timeline (for the most part).

It seemed like the most emotionally charged moments of Steve Rogers’s life were because of HYDRA. Negative and positive, the most emotionally taxing moment he can remember from before Dr. Erskine’s serum and Captain America was the day his mother died—October 15, 1936.

Naturally, when October rolled around, Steve began to gravitate more towards Bucky, increasing their physical contact and becoming more subdued. It wasn’t anything new; he’d acted like this since the first few years after he lost Sarah at age 18. They hadn’t done anything particularly racy yet; if anything, their relationship was mostly the same, excepting the intent behind their actions.

Now, Steve and Bucky weren’t afraid to reach out for the other one. In the thirties and forties, homosexuality wasn’t as publicly accepted. Of course, they had lived in Brooklyn, so they weren’t particularly abject to it, and both knew several gay men (and women) in their younger days, back when Steve was skinny and Bucky flirted with everything that walked. It just wasn't really done out in public, which they were slowly growing accustomed to.

They didn’t really speak about Sarah's passing, just knowing that cuddles would be in order, and October hadn't been too bad until Steve returned from visiting a children’s hospital in DC and found Bucky curled with that damn raccoon mug in a pile of blankets on the floor with the laptop open in front of him.

Steve took about two steps, dropped his shield, and started taking clothes off.

“While I appreciate the show, Stevie, Clint might not,” Bucky said wryly, and Steve turned with a start to see the door was still open and a dumbfounded Clint Barton was staring from across the hallway.

“Are you kidding, Barnes? Don’t stop because of me!” Clint said, nodding in appreciation. “Nat told me that they weren’t exaggerating when they called you perfect. Keep going, I want to see if she’s right.”

Steve rolled his eyes affectionately and shut the door to Clint’s protests, turning back towards his childhood friend with a smile and raised eyebrows. 

Bucky’s face split into a grin at the sight of the blush spreading down Steve’s neck and over his chest, following his (nonexistent) happy trail, and at the little pink spots appearing on the man’s elbows. “Don’t ever change, Stevie.”

The blonde scoffed and walked towards his bedroom, scooping up his shield and the shirt he had been wearing from the floor. “The first time was enough for me.”

“So what’ve you been up to today?” Steve called from the other room. Bucky could hear him rummaging through his drawers and the familiar whoosh of clothes being thrown towards their strategically-placed hamper from the living room.

“Just figuring some stuff out, research and all that,” the brunette replied, and itched his nose in thought while he continued scrolling through the Internet.

“Whatcha lookin’ up?” Steve said, and his voice got muffled in the way that meant he was pulling on a shirt. Bucky stifled the disappointed sigh that threatened to come out, and mentally steeled himself.

“Sexualities and stuff. There’s a lot more information out now. I’m pretty sure I’m pan.” Bucky said.

The sound of Steve digging through a drawer for his pants halted for a second, and then resumed.

“Really?” Steve asked, his voice sounding careful and measured.

Bucky breathed out slowly. Out of all the goddamned idiots in the world, he just had to be in love with this thickheaded one.

“Don’t sound so surprised, like you weren’t the one to pry me off that drag queen when I was sauced to hell after my seventeenth birthday.” Bucky said nonchalantly, closing the tab he had open and clicking Netflix. He and Steve were three seasons into Game of Thrones, and while they didn’t really understand what was going on, it was one show that everybody else (including Thor, after Darcy got involved) consistently talked about.

“Yeah, and then you wouldn’t shut up about her gams for the night. And then you swore off alcohol,” Steve said, coming out of his room in a white shirt and navy sweats. “And then you got drunk two days later.”

Bucky made room for Steve in his cocoon of blankets and the slightly taller blonde man wormed his way in, accepting the laptop and the still-warm penguin mug from where it had been nestled by Bucky’s thigh. When Steve’s fingers brushed Bucky’s leg, both men ignored the shiver that went through the brunette as they settled.

“The Rains of Castamere,” Steve read aloud. “Think it’ll be a good episode?”

“I don’t know,” shrugged Bucky. “I want to see what happens with Talisa and Robb!”

“They weren’t even in the last episode at all,” Steve said. “He’s your favorite, isn’t he?”

“I have a weakness for righteous men,” said Bucky shamelessly. “You, for example.”

Steve sputtered for a moment but Bucky pressed a cool metal finger to his lips and extended a hand to start the episode.

Fifty minutes later, both with teary eyes, Steve and Bucky were staring at the black laptop screen.

“He’s dead.” Steve whispered in a hushed voice. “They—they really killed him.”

Bucky’s lower lip started trembling. “He was so good! How could they—no! Don’t say it, maybe he’s just severely wounded.”

“Buck,” Steve breathed. “He’s—God, you know the statistics, I don’t need to tell you.”

“These shows aren’t accurate and he was my favorite!” Bucky wailed. “No!”

When Natasha walked in twenty minutes later, she was met with the scene of Bucky crying on a miserable Steve in a pile of blankets on their living room floor. Instantly the assassin’s face hardened, and she walked forward purposefully until Bucky looked up.

“They killed Robb Stark!” he howled. “And Talisa and Catelyn and _all of them_!”

“Oh, Bucky,” Natasha said, understanding his pain. “It only gets worse.”

“What do you mean it only gets worse!” he exclaimed, trying to push Steve away. “Get off, Stevie, _Natashawhatdoyoumean_!”

Steve held on tight, shushing Bucky softly and rocking a little bit. Natasha just clucked her tongue sympathetically and walked out with a wave over her shoulder, leaving behind the super soldiers; one despondent, the other sullen.

That night, Bucky and Steve both slept in Steve’s room, and when Steve woke up in the morning he was back to being the little spoon just like before the serum.

And when Bucky woke up?

He took one look into smiling blue eyes, cursed his weak spot for righteous men (Stevie looked confused at his mumbling), and leaned forward to press his lips right onto Steven Grant Rogers.

After fifteen seconds of sweet, chaste innocence, Steve pulled back to ask, “Am I just your rebound from Robb Stark? You know, he was your righteous man?”

Bucky scoffed and pulled himself over the blonde, kissing him hard and letting his tongue slip through before retreating, catching his teeth on Steve’s lower lip for half a second.

“You’re my righteous man, you fuckin' idiot.”


End file.
